Now polytechnic students struggle with server while taking online exams

About 1.1 lakh polytechnic students appeared for online common exams, conducted by the Directorate of Technical Education (DoTE), which commenced on Wednesday.

 P Mahesh, a civil engineering diploma student from the city suburbs who appeared for Construction Management paper, alleged that question paper was uploaded very late and downloading consumed more time. “I could not upload the scanned answer sheets as the server did not respond,” he added. The students who did not have computer or internet connection at home had to depend on browsing centres, as they could not download the question paper using their mobile phone. One such student, S Karthik, who is pursuing diploma in Mechanical Engineering, said he had to wait for a few hours at the browsing centre to download the question paper, he claimed. “Taking advantage of the situation, the centre charged more than Rs 25 for scanning and uploading each page,” he added.

 Some of the students claimed they faced trouble while converting scanned answer sheets into specified file size using their mobile phone. “We don’t know how to reduce the file size or use software for that,” said M Vignesh, an Electrical Engineering diploma student.

 However, T Purushothaman, the DoTE official in-charge all technical courses, said the server trouble was rectified immediately and there were no issues after that. “There were no issues in the server on Thursday; it worked fine,” he added. A few days ago, students from the University of Madras and Annamalai University, Chidambaram, also faced server issues while downloading question paper and uploading their answer scripts. Some students from rural areas also faced issues in sending their answer sheets through post as they need to travel a long distance for that.